Evangelical novels normalized violence against Muslims as holy duty

Evidence

Like North, Chuck Holton tried his hand at fiction, too. His fictional universe was populated by heroic military men and vulnerable women drawn to their physical strength. It was a world where a diabolical Islamic menace posed an imminent threat. Fortunately, there were brave and good men “willing to do the dirty work necessary to keep evil men at bay.” Make no mistake—this was a gruesome task. But since evil men understood no language but violence, “good men must open the dialogue and finish the argument in that language.” Holton believed it was critical that the military “be given the latitude and resources to do the job right.” In his 2009 novel Meltdown, one of Holton’s characters, a colonel, takes aim at “namby-pamby politicians” who lacked “the stones” necessary “to chase the jihadis back into their caves for good,” preferring instead to conduct tiresome investigations “into whether our troops were being gentle enough with the savages who were out to murder them.” This wasn’t just cowardly, it was treasonous. And what of peaceful Muslims in America? He wasn’t seeing any. Holton published his fictional series with Multnomah, a Christian publisher that also published Stu Weber, James Dobson, Steve Farrar, Josh Harris, and John Piper. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 492

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how a mainstream Christian publisher (Multnomah) mainstreamed Islamophobic militarist fiction across its catalog — the commerce-of-violence pipeline.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in consumer culture transmitting religious identity — Multnomah publishing across Dobson, Harris, and Piper shows the commercial channel linking men’s-movement and militarist authors.